Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure relates to application of labels to products including, made from, or derived from tobacco, or that otherwise incorporate tobacco, and are intended for human consumption, and more particularly, to apparatuses and methods for applying labels to such products.
Description of Related Art
Labels are often employed for a variety of purposes. For example, labels may be applied to products during or after the manufacture or packaging thereof such that manufacturers or distributors may identify and/or track the products. Labels may additionally or alternatively be applied by merchants prior to sale of the products. Accordingly, labels may be applied to products and related packaging at a variety of points in time during the product manufacturing, distribution, and sale cycles.
Some existing methods for applying labels rely on manual application thereof, by hand, to the products or packaging containing the products. For example, in the manufacture of cigarettes, a conventional type of tray for carrying filter elements, as-formed cigarettes, or the like, may include a polymeric body having a removable sidewall, and the removable sidewall may be constructed of cardboard. Each tray may have a tray-identifying label mounted to the polymeric body. In addition, the removable sidewall, conventionally referred to as a sword, may have an appropriate filter- or cigarette-identifying label mounted thereto, for identifying the filter elements or cigarettes in the tray including that sword as the removable sidewall. The filter elements/cigarettes may be stacked in such trays and held in place by respective swords. The trays may then be transported to alternate locations for inspection and/or further processing.
In order to track the identity of each tray of filter elements/cigarettes through subsequent processing steps, appropriately coded labels may be applied to the tray and/or the sword. In instances where such a label is applied to each sword, a worker may individually apply labels to the swords in a manual process. Since this process may include alignment of the label, in addition to application of the label to the sword, this process can be tedious and/or time consuming work. Further, since the labels may need to be placed in the proper location and/or in the proper orientation with respect to the sword for the labels to be appropriately read by automated label reading equipment, there may be other issues and/or drawbacks associated with the manual application of labels to products or packaging, for example, in a filter element and/or cigarette manufacturing process. Thus, there exists a need for an apparatus and method for applying such labels to sword portions of filter element/cigarette trays implementing such swords.